India: Marginalized Children Denied Education

(New Delhi) – School authorities in
India [2] persistently discriminate against children from
marginalized communities, denying them their right to
education, Human Rights Watch said in a report released
today. Four years after an ambitious education law went into
effect in India guaranteeing free schooling to every child
ages 6 to 14, almost every child is enrolled, yet nearly
half are likely to drop out before completing their
elementary education.

The 77-page report, “‘They Say
We’re Dirty’: Denying an Education to India’s
Marginalized,” [3] documents discrimination by school
authorities in four Indian states against Dalit, tribal, and
Muslim children. The discrimination creates an unwelcome
atmosphere that can lead to truancy and eventually may lead
the child to stop going to school. Weak monitoring
mechanisms fail to identify and track children who attend
school irregularly, are at risk of dropping out, or have
dropped out.

“India’s immense project to educate all
its children risks falling victim to deeply rooted
discrimination by teachers and other school staff against
the poor and marginalized,” said Jayshree Bajoria [4],
India researcher and author of the report. “Instead of
encouraging children from at-risk communities who are often
the first in their families to ever step inside a classroom,
teachers often neglect or even mistreat them.”

Detailed
case studies examine how the lack of accountability and
grievance redress mechanisms are continuing obstacles to
proper implementation of the Right to Education Act. Human
Rights Watch conducted research for this report in the
states of Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Delhi,
interviewing more than 160 people, including children,
parents, teachers, and a wide range of education experts,
rights activists, local authorities, and education
officials.

The Indian government should adopt more
effective measures to monitor the treatment of vulnerable
children and provide accessible redress mechanisms to ensure
they remain in the classroom, Human Rights Watch said.
According to the government, nearly half – over 80 million
children – drop out before completing their elementary
education.

In drafting the Right of Children to Free and
Compulsory Education Act, the central government recognized
exclusion of children as the “single most important
challenge in universalizing elementary education.” But
many education department officials at state, district, and
local levels have been unwilling to acknowledge or accept
that discrimination occurs in government schools, let alone
attempt to resolve these problems, Human Rights Watch
said.

“The teacher tells us to sit on the other side,”
said “Pankaj,” an eight-year-old tribal boy from Uttar
Pradesh. “If we sit with others, she scolds us and asks us
to sit separately. The teacher doesn’t sit with us because
she says we ‘are dirty.’”

Marginalized groups
continue to face discrimination in India despite
constitutional guarantees and laws prohibiting
discrimination, Human Rights Watch said. School authorities
reinforce age-old discriminatory attitudes based on caste,
ethnicity, religion, or gender. Children from Dalit, tribal,
and Muslim communities are often made to sit at the back of
the class or in separate rooms, insulted by the use of
derogatory names, denied leadership roles, and served food
last. They are even told to clean toilets, while children
from traditionally privileged groups are
not.

“Non-discrimination and equality are fundamental to
the Right to Education Act and yet the law provides no
penalties for violators,” Bajoria said. “If schools are
to become child-friendly environments for all of India’s
children, the government needs to send a strong message that
discriminatory behavior will no longer be tolerated and
those responsible will be held to account.”

Most state
education departments have failed to establish proper
mechanisms to monitor each child, and intervene promptly and
effectively to ensure they remain in school, Human Rights
Watch said. Because there is no common definition for
assessing when a child is considered to no longer be
attending school, various states have different norms: in
Karnataka, students are regarded as having dropped out of
school after seven days of unexplained absence, in Andhra
Pradesh it is a month, and in Chhattisgarh and Bihar it is
three months. This lack of a common definition hinders
efforts to recognize and address the problem.

The Right to
Education Act provides that children who have dropped out of
school or older children who never attended school should be
offered “bridge courses” to bring them up to speed so
they can return to mainstream schools in an age-appropriate
class. But state governments do not maintain proper records
of these children, provide the additional resources needed
for appropriate bridge courses, or track these children
through completion of elementary schooling once they are in
an age-appropriate class.

Children of migrant workers,
many belonging to Dalit and tribal communities, are most
vulnerable to dropping out due to lengthy absences from
school while searching for work with their parents. Yet the
state governments do not keep track of these children in any
systematic manner to ensure that they continue their
education. The labor departments at state level are not
properly carrying out programs meant for bringing child
laborers back to school. And state education departments are
not following up once a child is admitted to a mainstream
school, which often results in the child’s return to
work.

Central and state authorities are not adequately
supporting creative community-based mechanisms envisioned
under the Right to Education Act such as “school
management committees.” Parents told Human Rights Watch
that they do not have adequate representation on these
committees, and so they do not complain when there is
injustice against their children because school authorities
ignore the complaints or even reprimand the students.
Guidelines adopted to address grievances have often not been
implemented.

India is a party to core international human
rights treaties that protect children and provide for the
right of everyone to education, including the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the
Convention on the Rights of the Child. International law
also prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion,
ethnicity, social origin, or other status. The Convention on
the Rights of the Child obligates India to take measures to
encourage attendance and reduce dropout rates, and ensure
that the rights of the children are protected through
effective monitoring.

Prior to the national elections in
India in April 2014, the major national parties made
commitments in their election manifestos to improve
elementary school education. The central and state
governments should create clear indicators to detect and
address discrimination in schools, and to lay out
appropriate disciplinary measures for those found
responsible, Human Rights Watch said.

The government
should create a system to monitor and track every child from
enrollment through completion of elementary schooling, up to
Grade VIII. The government should initiate proper training
of teachers, so that they end exclusion and facilitate
greater interaction among children of different
socio-economic and caste backgrounds.

“India’s
political parties focused on education during the election
campaign,” Bajoria said. “But whoever takes office will
need to do more to ensure that children attend classes. An
important law is set to fail unless the government
intervenes now.”

Selected
Quotes

The names and identifying details of
interviewees have been withheld to protect their safety. All
names of children used in the report are
pseudonyms.

“Whenever the teachers are angry, they
call us Mullahs. The Hindu boys also call us Mullahs because
our fathers have beards. We feel insulted when they refer to
us like this.” – Javed, a 10-year-old Muslim boy,
Delhi

“The teacher always made us sit in a corner of the
room, and would throw keys at us . We only got food if
anything was left after other children were served….
(G)radually stopped going to school.” – Shyam, a
14-year-old Dalit boy, Uttar Pradesh

“We were asked to
massage a teacher’s legs. If we refused, he used to beat
us. There was a toilet for teachers, which is the one we had
to clean.” – Naresh, a 12-year-old Dalit boy,
Bihar

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